Liberal-National Coalition

The Liberal-National Coalition, also known as the Coalition, is an alliance of center-right parties that forms one of the two major groupings in Australian federal politics. The two partners in the coalition are the Liberal Party of Australia and the National Party of Australia, with the Liberals drawing their vote from urban areas and the Nationals operating almost exclusively in rural and regional areas. The partnership between the two parties dated back to 1946, and has continued almost uninterrupted since then. The two parties cooperate on their federal election campaigns, run joint Senate tickets in all but one state, and avoid running candidates against each other in the House of Representatives. A merger between the two parties never materialized, but their branches in the Northern Territory merged in 1974 to form the Country Liberal Party, while their Queensland state-level parties merged in 2008 to form the Liberal National Party of Queensland. The coalition's main opponent is the Australian Labor Party, and the Liberal-National Coalition and the ALP are often regarded as operating in a two-party system.